Forget ‘Want’

Forget ‘Want’

I don’t want to be up yet. I don’t want yogurt for breakfast. I didn’t want to do yoga at an hour when most people don’t even know their own names. I don’t want to go to work today. I don’t want to smile when I don’t feel like smiling. I don’t want to pretend to be happy. I want to stay home in my sweats, cuddle with my dogs, talk to no one, and eat a bacon cheeseburger with a heaping side of French fries.

Pretty negative, right? Depression has a way of doing that. So does not quite enough sleep.

The thing that I keep trying to remind myself is that if I’m going to genuinely start feeling better, I need to forget what I want and don’t want. My decisions need to be all about what makes me feel my best, from the inside out. Because in reality, if I were to do all of the things I want to do and not do the things I don’t want to do, I’d feel pretty shitty. I know, because I’ve done it.

Battling the ‘want,’ though, is certainly a challenge for me.

But it’s day one. I gave myself the weekend to read, research, shop, and plan. Now it’s time to put all of that into practice. It’s so easy to get sucked into the prep and never get around to the work. Not long ago, I was on Pinterest and ran across what looked like one of those ‘fitspiration’ posts, but instead it said something like, “Get off Pinterest and get moving.” That wasn’t it exactly, but I had my little, “Fuck you, I will when I’m ready,” moment, and kept scrolling down the page.

Well. I’m not ready. But I did it. So take that, random, anonymous person who has more common sense than most of us.

Now the trick is to keep it going, remembering that the bigger ‘want’ is to be healthy. To do that, I have to let go of the instant gratification wants. Change is slow, and it’s important to keep the goal in mind. So here’s where I’m starting:

Age: 30

Height: 5’7″

Weight: 166lbs

Body fat: 25%

Bust/waist/hips: 38″/31.5″/42″

BMI: 26 (overweight)

Average sleep: 7.5 hours (Pretty good, right? I know. I was surprised, too)

Happy scale (1-10): 4

Sometime soon, I’ll get my strength training maxes and add those to my list, here. After all, it’s not about what I look like, it’s about being healthy, happy, and strong. And these data points are not at all in order of priority, or necessarily a priority at all. Because honestly, I don’t give two shits about my body mass index, and weight is just our relationship with gravity (thanks, Mom!). Both are just another way to track progress, one way or the other.